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Your chest aches all the way back to Lebanon.
Not from something physical—as far as you can tell, nothing is wrong, at least nothing to be concerned about—but something more ingrained, a sadness that’s almost always there, regardless of hour, season, moon. From the front seat of your pickup, you scratch over your heart, temporarily alleviating the sting, at least until the next unattended crossroads. Through the open windows, the last of the summer’s breeze blows in, warm and tacky at the back of your neck, equally as aggravating.
There’s no cause for it, surely. Probably a phantom pain, or a premonition, if you’ll go that far. If anyone were dead, you’d know it, the sudden absence of two human souls probably enough to forcibly rip you away from whatever you were tending to and drag you back to the middle of nowhere Kansas. But this isn’t that—this is different. Persistent in a way you haven’t felt, at least not since God and Amara left and the fate of the world didn’t entirely rest on your shoulders. Not yours alone; you shared the burden, helped carry the weight until you couldn't, until you thought you’d lost everything and were flung halfway across the state in the blink of an eye.
It’s been calm. No tension, no worry aside from sending Lucifer back to the cage for the rest of eternity, nothing but the brief respite of quiet that surrounds you, until something inevitably changes and thrusts you back into the dark with no hope for survival. Now, though—Now, your heart stutters as the sun begins to set, sharp pangs that jolt you conscious the longer you drive down barren roads, wheat stalks as high as the bed of your truck. A motorcycle passes an hour outside of Lebanon, the only vehicle you’ve seen since you left Belleville. The driver disappears in the rearview, the plains swallowing them whole, gone as soon as it appeared.
You don’t think about it, at least not until you pull into the subterranean garage, the Impala now sitting alongside an old Thriftmaster and the space where you park. One of the old Indian’s is gone, and faintly you smell gasoline, the scent thick in the air. No tire tracks, though; no one was in a hurry to make their getaway.
That means they’re alive.
Sam is in the library when you make your way upstairs, his head in his hands, coffee mug drained and lying on its side. He won’t speak to you aside from a quick glance up to make sure you’re not someone you shouldn't be. His eyes are red, dried tears streaking down his face; fresh ones fall at the sight of you, and it only takes him a split second to push out of his chair and pull you into his arms, without so much as a hello. “Sam,” you say, but he doesn’t answer, just lingers there long enough for you to return the embrace, patting between his shoulder blades. It’s enough to calm him, his shoulders beginning to ease, steady by the time he pulls away.
He doesn’t speak. Just sits back in his chair and cradles his head again, palming his eyes to keep back his emotions, ultimately failing. You shouldn’t leave him, but something happened here, something you can’t fathom. Still, the ache in your chest persists, and it only then dawns on you that you haven’t seen sight of Mary or Dean. It’s only been a few weeks, but Mary has become a constant around the Letter’s stronghold, and Dean is almost always at her back with admiration in his eyes.
Now, they’re nowhere to be found, and you hurt.
Dean isn’t in his room when you go to check on him; nor is he anywhere else on the main floor, or in the basement. Instead, you find him on the roof, the stairwell hatch left open in his haste to escape. He’s just… sitting, staring up at the sky, his hands in his lap, his ankles pressed into his haunches. “Dean,” you call out; he doesn’t hear you, his eyes on the dwindling sunlight spread out over the horizon, on the remaining houses in Lebanon’s limits and the plains as far as he can see, wheat and corn and sunflowers basking in what few minutes of light they have left.
A light breeze blows, ruffling Dean’s hair and the tail of your suit jacket; your coat’s still sitting on the passenger seat of your truck, forgotten and abandoned in your search to discover just what happened. Slowly, the pieces fall together, the pain in your chest heightening when you sit next to Dean, anguish radiating off him in pounding waves, his frame a livewire, shaking. White knuckled fists tremble against his thighs, and you take one in hand, letting it rattle against your palm.
Something happened here—Something involving his mother, or worse, himself. “I didn’t call you,” Dean says, his voice absolutely ravaged, tinged in blood. He’s been screaming up here, wailing where no one can hear him, his agony carried away by the wind.
He looks at you with bloodshot eyes, the greens of his irises pronounced in a way you never want to see again, not as long as you can help it. No tears, though—though he might want to, he can’t, his sadness a dark blot on his soul, downtrodden within his body. This is what you’ve been feeling. The weight in your chest, the pain radiating through your limbs, it’s all from him. It’s always been from him.
“You did,” you tell him, cupping his fist in both hands now, drawing it to your lips. Dean lets out a whine and his shoulders shake, chest rattling when he exhales. “What happened?”
“…Shoulda known it’s too good to be true,” Dean rumbles, his tone fading with every word. He won’t be able to speak soon; his voice won’t let it, especially if he continues to talk. Figures, the one time he should speak, and it’s killing him, blood running down his throat, raw. “She just—said she missed us. Not us, but missed… Heaven. Not my fault.” His attempt to laugh comes out as a sob instead, and he nearly gags on his own words. “Not my fault she didn’t get to see us grow up. She just… up’n left, like we don’t matter.”
You just hold his hand, let him continue, even when it becomes too much to bear. Slowly, you feel his fingers search out yours, and you twine them together, feel him clutch you tight, a lifeline.
“I missed her,” Dean admits, and your heart breaks with the tear that slips free, a wave washing down after. “Never thought I’d see her again. And she was here, and she was… Alive. And I thought, if she was here, maybe we could start over. I’ve never seen Sammy this… happy before, and I… I felt something. Like things were gonna be normal. Got my family back.” He looks to you, his lip quivering despite himself. “Got him, got you… Had her.”
“What did she say to you?” you ask. Dean just closes his eyes and slumps, and you catch him, cradling him in your arms on the rooftop, his hands clinging to you, a vain effort to tug you closer, bury himself in you. You’ve always wanted him, but never like this—never when he’s this distraught, terrified of existence and his own mortality, isolation creeping into his soul and draining him of whatever joy he has left. “Dean…”
“Said she was gonna go find herself,” Dean answers, wheezing into your shirt, salt staining the fabric. “Just didn’t… word it that way.”
Silence passes while he collects himself; in the interim, you stroke down his back, wait for him to finish his thoughts, compose himself enough to speak. His voice is shot by the time he does, a hoarse whisper, barely reminiscent of himself. The longer he cries, the more you feel, for him, because of him—him alone.
“She’s our mom,” Dean starts, gritting his teeth. “She’s supposed to… She ain’t supposed to run off and leave us. Not now, not when we just got her back. Like we were nothing to her, like we didn’t matter.” He stops, swallows down bile; you hold him regardless, carding your fingers through his sweat damp hair, feeling him shudder under your fingertips. “What am I supposed to do with that? What if she gets herself hurt, what if… I’m still the same person, Cas. I’m still her son, I’m just… Things changed. Life goes on, things go to shit in a second, but I’m still her son.
“And I get it, man.” He sniffles, doing nothing to clear his nose. “She just jumped three decades and nothing’s supposed to be peachy. But we were gonna get her on her feet, and I was gonna… We were gonna be a family, Cas. I got my mom back, and… Did I do something wrong? Did I hope too much? Did I… Did I love her too much?”
You let out a breath, kiss his hair. “You did nothing wrong,” you tell him, inhaling when he lets out a low whimper, almost like a lost child in your arms. “It’s complicated, but she still loves you all the same, no matter how she meant it.”
“But she meant it,” Dean says, verging on harsh; his heart isn’t in it though, his body too tired, his soul too frail. “She said she loved her boys, not… Not us.”
Sitting up, he manages to worm you into a proper hug, one that nearly leaves him in your lap, one of your legs propped over his thigh, him slotted between yours. He tucks his head against your neck, arms slung low around your back, fists clenching into your shirt underneath your jacket. It’s closer than you’ve ever gotten, and you’ll take what you can get, as long as you’re the person he can turn to, spill his darkest secrets to in the dead of night. You’re the only one who can touch him like this, draw him back to himself, bring the light back into his eyes.
Now, that light is dim, never to return. He’s been abandoned for far too long by everyone he knows, and you’re not about to start now by leaving him. If you could help it, you’d never leave him again. “You’re still the person you were in heaven,” you assure him. He holds you tighter, his breath warm against your neck while he sobs. “Whether she’ll come to terms with that, you have to let her decide. But she loves you, Dean. Both you and Sam.”
“She coulda stayed,” Dean whines. “She coulda… It’s not fair.”
“I know,” you whisper, lips against his ear. “I know, and you don’t deserve what she told you. But she’ll come back, you have to believe that.”
“Doesn’t make it any better,” Dean says. You can barely hear him now, his voice diminishing by the second, his last utterance, “…I just want my mom back.”
He’s quiet for a long while after that, resting there in your arms, still curled around you, unwilling to part for the world. Reassurances don't work anymore, nor do attempts to get him to speak, even one word. For now, he’s silent, green eyes glassy, staring into nothing. “You’ll be okay,” you tell him, ultimately falling on deaf ears. Dean doesn’t look at you, even when he pulls away minutes later, even when you cup his cheeks with both hands to wipe away the tears, letting them collect on your thumb. For some reason, you don’t think he can, not anymore, not when his heart is torn and he’s vulnerable, barely himself in your hands.
“Dean,” you whisper; nothing, just a sigh before he leans forward again; this time, it’s a proper embrace, and you hold him there until his tears stop and he’s quiet, still underneath the starry sky, cold winds beginning to pour in with the absence of the sun. There, with no witnesses, you tell him you love him, you tell him that you’ll stay, for as long as you can, until the world crumbles around you and ceases to be. At least then, you know he’ll be at peace, loved, whole.
That night, he sleeps facing you, his head underneath your chin, your arms around him, enveloping him in warmth and soothing the absence vacated within his heart, easing the ache for now. As long as he’s there, you can bear the pain, revel in it as long as you’re together, joined in a way you can’t even begin to describe, soul and grace mingling on some other plane, healing years’ worth of heartache just from proximity, from touch.
“She loves you,” you tell him, close to his lips, but not enough. His eyelids flutter; if he can hear you, you don’t bother to ask. “Sam loves you,” you say. “I love you,” you repeat, and hold him close, feeling him melt into your arms.
This—This broken boy, lost and alone in the world, abandoned in every way imaginable, is enough. He’ll always be enough.